So I’m demonstrating it with another “fan” Page I’ve set up for myself as a writer, speaker, etc. If you are administering a fan page in Facebook, here’s how you can get a shorter URL, without the long string of numbers that is part of your basic URL.

If you haven’t set a vanity URL for your personal profile, you will have an opportunity to do it. But if you have already set a personal URL, as I have, and if you are a Page administrator/owner, you will see a message like this (click to enlarge):

If you click on the link that says “Set a username for your Pages” you will see a drop-down menu like this (if you have multiple Pages):

Then you will get a chance to select your username for the page, and check its availability:

If it is available, you will see a message like this that warns you sternly that this is not something to take lightly:

I haven’t noticed this in SMUG and was hoping you might have some advice on how to mesh our professional and personal activities online. I’m beginning to suffer from a bit of an identity crisis. My professional profile is on LinkedIn and my personal profile is on Facebook (and professional on Twitter but only for monitoring purposes). That seems fairly clear-cut but what if I would like to join LinkedIn groups as a “civilian?” I don’t think the engineering company I work for is well served by seeing women’s healthcare issues on my LinkedIn profile. I guess I could list breast cancer affiliations including my blog as personal interests on my work profile but that seems just a tad weird. Or is it? Any advice from you or how others handle it would be more than welcome. Even sending you this message I had to stop and think for a second about which way to identify myself. I chose personal and I think that made sense. But yikes! If I were writing to Ann Landers I would sign this “Confused.” Thanks.

Jackie was quick to add “jfoxhdr is my Twitter name but just a reminder I have never tweeted. I’m on there primarily to monitor certain news items and follow people for work (ENR and a couple of environmental reporters) and for fun (you and Stephen Colbert.)”

Answer:

Dear “Confused”…er, I mean Jackie. First, I’m honored to be in your “for fun” group in Twitter, along with Stephen Colbert. How cool is that?

Second, don’t apologize for the way you use Twitter. It’s perfectly fine to be in “Listen Only” mode if that works for you. Much better than being a spam machine.

Now to your main question:

I really think it comes down to Integrity, which my handy Mac Dictionary app defines as:

1 the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness : he is known to be a man of integrity.
2 the state of being whole and undivided : upholding territorial integrity and national sovereignty.

I personally don’t think it’s a problem for your business and professional colleagues to know that you’re concerned about breast cancer and active in advocacy related to it.

Doing this advocacy on work time wouldn’t be good. But knowing that you have this interest helps your clients, customers and colleagues know you better. And if all your LinkedIn posts were about non-work passions, that probably would indicate that you’re really not that interested in your engineering work.

If you have clients to whom you are “selling” it’s better for them to get to know you as a person, not just as a disembodied voice at the end of the phone line. That makes it less likely they would drop your company for a $5 an hour discount they might get from a competitor.

If you’re involved in a jihadist group, that would be a different story. Probably best to keep that off your LinkedIn profile, because while it might not bar you from boarding a U.S.-bound plane from Amsterdam, it likely would turn off potential business associates.

But for almost any other kind of personal interest, it just comes down to proportion. Don’t go overboard in advocating for a cause so that’s all your professional colleagues and customers see.

In summary, I would just say: “Don’t be a Sybil.” Be one integrated personality (and online persona).

I’m trying to convince my boss we need to start a twitter account and she’s not convinced. My main argument has been that it would increase our exposure on the web through our links on twitter. Can you help me make a better case?

And on the slight chance that we do get to start twitter, what can I do to build a following?

Here are my top six reasons why organizations should have a branded Twitter account:

Brand Protection. If you claim your organization’s name on Twitter, others can’t. One headache you don’t want is having someone impersonating your organization on Twitter. Claiming your Twitter handle is a good step, even from a purely defensive perspective.

Scalability. You can have a Twitter account without putting a lot of human resources into it. It’s reasonable at first to use a service that converts the RSS feed of your news releases into tweets, without any additional human involvement. You do have RSS feeds, right? If not, see the Social Media 102 course, and also my third reason.

Serving stakeholders. A non-human Twitter account connected to an RSS feed isn’t ideal, but like RSS it does at least provide a way for people interested in your news to get it in a way that’s convenient for them. And as you become more familiar with Twitter, it can lead to a much better use, Listening and Engagement, which I list as my last reason.

Increased News Coverage. Journalists are increasingly involved in Twitter, and looking to it as a quick way to identify sources and story ideas. Here’s a portion of an email one of my colleagues got in late October from @KimPainter, a columnist with USA Today (click to enlarge):

It’s Free. Nothing I have mentioned above involves any cash. Your Twitter account is free. Twitterfeed to convert your RSS feed to tweets also is free. But even if you have to manually send tweets about your news, and including a link to your news releases, the time investment can be minimal. It doesn’t involve incremental cash outlays. If you’re like most organizations, you probably pay EurekAlert or PR Newswire or BusinessWire to distribute your news releases. If you are paying for those services, why wouldn’t you take advantage of a free tool like Twitter?

Listening and Engagement. The preceding reasons provide more than enough justification for getting a corporate Twitter account, but engaging stakeholders and listening to them is the best use for Twitter. For that reason, whether your boss approves a corporately branded Twitter account or not, I strongly suggest that you get your own personal Twitter account. Just dive in and start making connections. As you are using Twitter personally, you will see applications that are relevant to your work.

A. I’m not aware of anything like a comprehensive list of hospital Twitter chats. Ed Bennett’s Hospital Social Networking List is a great resource to tell us which hospitals have social media presence, and he even has some great hospital Twitter lists by state, but the list doesn’t include specific projects (such as surgical cases being “tweeted” that have been undertaken by hospitals or healthcare organizations.

But the great thing about social media is that you can build a list pretty quickly by crowdsourcing…via Twitter.

Or at least I think we can. Let’s see!

I’m listing below some of the Twitter chats/events I’ve been involved with through Mayo Clinic, along with some others I’m aware of that others have done.

It’s not even close to exhaustive.But that’s where you come in. If you know of hospitals that have done Twitter events, whether it was related to a surgical procedure, or a communications crisis, or promoting research findings, or whatever other ways you’ve used Twitter (or seen it used) in a hospital setting, please tell about it in the comments below.

Please include the name of the hospital, its Twitter handle, a relevant link to a post, news release or news story describing the effort, and any description you would like to add. Also please indicate which category (listed in bold below) is appropriate. And if you think I’m missing a category that should be added, please tell me that, too.

You also can share your examples via Twitter, using the #HospitalTweets tag. But by adding them in the comments below, they’ll be more permanent (since Twitter doesn’t archive tweets)…and of course, you’re not limited to 140 characters.

I will update this post based on your contributions to create a more comprehensive list.

Scott & White Healthcare (@SWHealthCare) used social media to manage the crisis surrounding the Fort Hood shootings and the victims who had been transported there for care.

Presentations and Training:

At @MayoClinic, we have held three Tweetcamps to provide training for staff. Here’s a post that describes Tweetcamp III.

When I do presentations, I regularly include a Twitter back-channel, such as this training seminar on social media I did yesterday with local advocacy chapters of American Heart Association. This is a good way for participants to get hands-on experience with Twitter.